Simon never met his father, who died in the Tenerife airport disaster before he was born. The stories around the crash are hazy, and his mother stubbornly refuses to provide any details. Now grown, Simon roams the barbershop his grandfather left him, honing razors and polishing mirrors. He keeps the sign on the door turned to FERMÉ and allows customers in one by one, massaging scalps and shaving throats in an intimate dance. There’s only one customer whose presence in Simon’s impeccable shop breaks this silent routine: the writer. Trimming the fine tips of the writer’s eyebrows, Simon loses himself in a parallel life—one where he lives and grows old with the writer, shaping a crewcut around an “old, weathered face.” The writer, looking for a life to fold into his next book, becomes entranced by the mystery of Simon’s father. As Simon begins to scour the web for the story behind the crash, a carefully observed portrait of love and loneliness emerges. Simon’s life begins to feel more and more like fiction as the details—real or imagined—of his father’s life are laid bare. With subdued prose and disconcerting candor, Gerbrand Bakker writes life into his characters—a salute to the novelist’s craft and the redemptive power of fiction.